


Light of Sun and Moon

by baranduin



Category: Lord of the Rings (2001 2002 2003), Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-16
Updated: 2010-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-06 08:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baranduin/pseuds/baranduin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waking up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light of Sun and Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Written right after _Return of the King_ came out, inspired by the waking up scene at the Houses of Healing.

Shire folk always said Frodo's skin was too pale, that there was something unnatural about it. Like it was some sort of proof that he was a little cracked and always had been. One of the more poetically-inclined hobbits of Bywater, possibly after a pint too many of ale, once said that Elves had gotten to him when he was a babe in the cradle and poured the light of moon and stars over him. They all said he was fair enough, if you liked that sort of thing, but not quite hobbitlike.

Sam never thought that way, that is, he never thought Frodo unnatural or unhobbitlike. It's not that he disputed others' claims that Frodo was different, only he always heard the scorn in their voices and it made him mad.

"Well, then, what would you call it?" Ted Sandyman would ask of an evening at the Green Dragon when Sam would rise to the bait. But he could never quite put it into words, and later, when he'd had time to cool down, he was always glad he couldn't, for it didn't seem right for him to go talking of Mr. Frodo that way. Or any way, for that matter. It wasn't respectful enough.

But he would think on it as he walked home under the starlight, and it was a fine question to ponder through long winter nights tucked up cozily at Bagshot Row and during warm spring afternoons cutting the grass up in Bag End.

Sam thought Frodo's skin the finest, fairest thing he'd ever seen, but even after all that pondering, he could never quite name its color to his satisfaction until he came to Lothlorien and knelt in the green grass on Cerin Amroth among the winter blooms of white niphredil. He picked one of them and held it close to his face, close enough for his gardener's eye to pick out the faint blush that spread from the center of the flower and made it glow with life and health, even in the quiet heart of winter. And so Frodo had always glowed to him.

He did not tell anyone what he thought.

* * *

It was like being inside a great globe of the finest golden honey, one that maybe Goldberry herself had carefully taken drop by drop from its comb.

That was Sam's first thought when he stepped around the threshold to Frodo's room and peered inside. The rays of the sun poured through the tall windows and lit each person and object with its warmth. Everyone but Frodo.

_"Oh, he's so pale."_ That was Sam's second thought. _"It's like all the color in the world's been pulled out of him. That's not right."_

But there was no time for talk because, pale or not, Frodo was laughing. They were all laughing and laughing and laughing, like when a summer storm finally breaks and the rain pours warm and glad down upturned smiling faces.

Sam leaned against the door jamb and watched them in silence for a minute. They were all there, all of them except Boromir. Even Gandalf was there, standing at the foot of Frodo's bed, and he laughed the loudest. It was as though his laughter reached out and coiled around them all and filled them with it, and there was nothing any of them could do but join him.

It was the most joyful sound Sam had ever heard.

But he was quiet and did not join in the laughter. He was waiting for something.

It was a small room, and so he was not seen at first, hidden behind the milling forms of laughing man and dwarf and elf and hobbits and wizard. But after a moment, they parted a little to form a pathway between door and bed, and Frodo turned his head and saw Sam.

He stopped laughing. He and Sam looked long on each other, their mouths curved up just a little. They spoke no words to each other.

The silence of Frodo's half-smile was more joyful than his laughter. After a minute, Sam walked to the bed and looked with his gardener's eye into Frodo's face.

_"Yes."_

It was there after all, that faint flush of warmth and life in the paleness of Frodo's skin. _"Maybe I was too far to see it before,"_ Sam thought.

"I'm glad you're here, Sam," Frodo said. "I missed you."

Sam sat on the bed, took Frodo's bandaged hand in his and started to laugh.

* * *

When Frodo pulled his nightshirt over his head and knelt before Sam in the middle of the bed, Sam thought maybe there had been something to what that Bywater wit had said an age ago. Still, the forgotten poet had not quite gotten it right, and why should he have? He did not have the eyes to see what Sam did—not all those years ago in the Shire and not now.

The light from moon and stars may have been poured over Frodo when he lay innocent in his cradle, but it had not stayed on his skin's surface. It must have been absorbed inside him just as he had taken in his mother's milk, and, just as the mithril writing on the doors of Moria had run clean and true under moonlight and tracing hand, so it was tonight though the hand belonged not to a wizard.

Frodo's room was clean and airy, the night was still and warm, and the moonlight and starlight poured in through all the windows just as the sun had done that afternoon.

"Sam? Please?" Frodo's voice was soft.

Sam knelt on the bed next to Frodo and slipped off his nightshirt. Oh, he knew their injuries lay too burdensome on their bodies and hearts to even think of pleasure, but that meant nothing. Not when he could rest his hands on Frodo and smooth away a little of the memory of whip lash and spider sting that lay heavy on his darling.

Sam could barely see Frodo's body even in the clear silver of Minas Tirith's peaceful night, but he didn't need any light to read the map of Frodo's journey. He reached out his hand and felt more than heard Frodo's sigh when his fingers limned the line of Morgul blade.

Softly.

The straight line shone out cool and clear when Sam drew away his hand.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not really," Frodo said. "Again?"

This time Sam laid his lips to Frodo's shoulder, and this time he used his eyes to guide his way for the scar was mithril bright against the pale skin of Frodo's chest. When he drew away after long silent minutes broken only by the softest of sighs, Frodo smiled and reached out gentle fingers to stroke a scratch on Sam's face.

"Oh, Sam. You're so pale it looks like the moonlight has gotten inside you."

* * *

All was cool and pale and quiet, all outward passion fled. The afternoon light in the sheltered harbor lay weightlessly upon the grey stone buildings that twined up the slopes surrounding Lhûn's crescent shore. It was quiet, so quiet that Sam thought perhaps he had never known such a thing before, not in his heart of hearts. There had been the quiet of a Shire night when the snick of a shutting door a half mile away sounded so loudly and clearly that Sam always knew exactly to whom it belonged. In Rivendell and Lorien, there had been a different quiet, though it had been but the door behind which the protective power of the Lord of Rivendell and the Lady of Lorien had risen up at need. There had been other silences that Sam did not care to recall. But this ...

There was only gull cry and the slap of water against the grey ship.

Nothing was as pale as Frodo's face, but it had nothing to do with moon or stars any more, nothing to do with light at all. It was something that Sam had tried to deny to his own heart while they had still been in the Shire. How could one not refuse such evidence when the sun rose each morning in Hobbiton and spilled out its radiance so generously that every living thing gloried in absorbing it in its own way? The rose bloomed brighter than before, the soil was warmer, and the children's laughter rang out richer than ever and that was saying a lot.

_"He looks like one of them stone people lyin' asleep in that street in Minas Tirith Captain Faramir showed us. There's not even the hint of color in his face anymore."_

"You cannot always be torn in two. You must be whole," Frodo had said to him some time ago. An hour. A week. Now.

Simple words, aye. And true. Sam could not deny it. But not denying the truth and accepting them fully were two different things, and the words still echoing in his heart didn't help while Frodo held him in his arms and kissed his forehead with pale, cool lips. Calm mouth, all need spent—or hidden. The tears still flowed down Sam's face, and it didn't help him at all to remind himself that he would be whole and well under the green and gold light of the Shire's living fullness.

It just didn't matter right now, not when the only way he was going to be whole was to have half of him ripped away first. The tearing went deep, and it was everything Sam could muster within himself not to cry out from the ragged pain of it, the tearing that began when Gandalf said, "It is time, Frodo."

And the tearing was complete as Frodo's cool lips left his forehead and he drew back his encircling arms. When he walked away, his back was straight.

It must have taken at least a little time for Frodo to reach the deck of the ship, but all Sam knew was that one minute Frodo was standing next to him and the next he was gone from him and the world before his eyes was leached of all color.

Frodo turned around, and the sun came out, enfolding Sam with its gentle warmth. His eyes were dazzled, though he could not say whether it was the light fragmenting against his tears or Frodo's smile that did it. He took a deep breath as the ship slipped its moorings and began to make its way from the harbor.

It was time to go home. Rosie would be expecting him.


End file.
